F1 | Vasseur: “Red Bull under pressure, but another step is needed”

The Miami Grand Prix saw three great teams as protagonists, namely McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari, but with three different visions of what the weekend brought and meant. The victory of the Woking team also came thanks to a series of fortunate circumstances, in particular the entry of the Safety Car at the most propitious moment, but there is no doubt that, when it had the chance to express its pace in the air clean, Norris showed a superior pace to that of his rivals.

For Red Bull, the American stage represented a weekend in which it was unable to capitalize, as usual, on the potential of the RB20, on which it also had to work hard, thanks to the approaching rivals. Verstappen never found the ideal feeling with the car, neither in qualifying nor in the race, having to also deal with the damage to the floor suffered when he uprooted the pole at the chicane.

It is precisely in this context that Ferrari’s weekend takes place, which on the one hand looks to the future with optimism, but on the other is also aware that it is necessary to continue working to close a gap that is still present. The Red team has not yet brought any update package, which will only arrive in the next round in Imola, but in Miami this topic only weighed up to a certain point, because the fundamental aspect, beyond pure performance, was finding the way to make the tires work best.

McLaren was the confirmation of this. After a complicated qualifying with the soft, where it was never able to exploit in the best way, in the race with two more robust and flexible compounds, such as the medium and the hard, in the race the MCL38 magically found the rhythm to stretch and take off towards stage success. On a circuit like Miami, overtaking isn’t easy, so much so that even the Woking team itself was rather surprised after the sprint despite having opted for a fairly unloaded wing.

This is why track position has become fundamental. Although it is true that Piastri was able to overtake Leclerc in the first part of the race, the Australian was never able to break away, with the Monegasque always well anchored behind him.

“In general, I think there are three teams that fought throughout the weekend in two or three tenths, from one lap to another, from one stint to another or from one compound to another,” said Frederic Vasseur after the race, underlining that he was not at all surprised by McLaren’s competitiveness.

On the other hand, however, the Red Bull Team Principal also wanted to highlight how the gap from the RB20 is narrowing, which pushes Red Bull to have to dare something more when it doesn’t have the safety margin of the past. Last year, in Miami, Verstappen staged a great comeback, but it is also true that Ferrari and Mercedes at the time clashed with an aero concept that would be changed in subsequent GPs. Furthermore, the temperatures recorded over the last weekend reached almost 50°C on the asphalt, resulting much higher than those of 2023.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Aspects which, combined with a feeling that was far from perfect, especially due to annoying understeer in the fast sections, also pushed Red Bull to play defense in the first stint. From a purely strategic point of view, the choice to call Leclerc back to the pits early was not wrong, but it makes sense in the choice of wanting to mix the cards on the table, trying to overtake Piastri first and foremost. The durability of the tire would not have been an issue: with the hard you could run the entire race in terms of pure degradation, given that the only concern was thermal degradation, a different phenomenon. In the few laps he ran on new tyres, which did not require a particular warm-up phase, the Monegasque began to narrow the gap even from Verstappen, pushing his rivals to react.

In fact, Red Bull did not need to bring forward the stop, but having a “delta” of only 2 seconds before the entry of the Virtual Safety Car, the strategists did not want to take any risks, calling Max back to the pits to maintain the track position by covering on the Ferrari. It is clear that, without the subsequent intervention of the safety car for the accident between Magnussen and Sargeant, realistically Verstappen would have had a real chance of taking home his fifth victory of the season, an aspect of which even Vasseur himself is aware.

“I honestly think Red Bull is still ahead. Max probably could have won today without the Safety Car story. I don’t want to draw any conclusions, but if they took pole position it means they still have a small advantage. What is true is that compared to a year ago, when we manage to do a good job and put everything together, we are there”, explained the Cavallino manager, also underlining how important this aspect is to try to put pressure on Red Bull , without forgetting that we still need another step to do it consistently.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“It means that we are putting Red Bull under a bit of pressure, that they have to be a bit more aggressive with the strategy, that they are no longer in the comfort zone like last year, where no matter what happens, after the second lap they were in front of. This changes the management of the race. It’s an opportunity for us because, if we take another small step forward, I think we will really be able to fight with them every single weekend.”

A well-considered reasoning on the part of the Frenchman, which also reflects that of Andrea Stella, who did not let himself be carried away by easy enthusiasm, underlining how Red Bull remains the reference team. The single-seater from Milton Keynes still manages to make consistency and global competitiveness its true strong point, fighting at the top on every track encountered so far. However, in certain events in which the RB20 does not prove perfect, the gap can narrow and it is there, as mentioned by the rival teams, that the opponents must try to apply pressure.

Ferrari had started the weekend as one of the most competitive teams in the slow, so much so that it recorded one of the most competitive central sectors in the sprint qualifying, in an almost opposite manner to the RB20, which instead made the first intermediate time and the medium and high speed corners one of the its strengths.

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The interesting aspect is that, however, over the course of the weekend the roles were almost reversed, with the teams working in the opposite direction. While Red Bull went looking for performance in the slow section, the Red team pushed to find load and speed in the first sector. In the second qualifying, in fact, there was a sort of “levelling”, with much less marked differences compared to the sprint qualifying.

In the race, the SF-24 proved to be the fastest of the leading teams in the first sector, more than Red Bull and McLaren, who tend to make corners like these a strong point. It is no coincidence that Stella admitted how the Woking team sacrificed their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses in the slow game. Probably, at Ferrari the greater suspension stiffness and other small elements made themselves felt over the long distance in the second sector, where in fact we saw how both Leclerc and Sainz struggled to find that starting point in traction to attack their rivals, a crucial issue on this track when in traffic.

The Italian single-seater ends its first period of life well, at the top of the rankings, but it is clear that, as admitted by Vasseur, an extra step is now needed. In Miami the updates played a less impactful role than at other tracks, showcasing more of the teams’ ability to optimize the package based on certain conditions. But this is a discussion linked to the characteristics and conditions of the US track: the first big innovations will arrive from Imola, to take certain basic concepts of the SF-24 to the extreme and get closer to the “global” competitiveness of a Red Bull which, certainly, does not will remain watching.